UT Collections

As an attorney working for the Legal Aid and Defender Society of Travis County, Frances Jalet-Cruz represented Texas inmates in suits against the Texas prison system and became one of the central figures in the Texas prison reform movement during the late 1960s and 1970s. The collection includes correspondence, legal documents, newspapers, clippings, and printed material documenting Jalet-Cruz's activities as an attorney and activist on this issue.

The papers document Frances "Sissy" Tarlton Farenthold's support of women’s rights and women’s increased involvement in politics; activism in the nuclear disarmament and peace movements; promotion of civil and prisoners’ rights; international relations in China, the U.S.S.R., South Africa, and other countries; as well as education, health, militarization, and other social and political issues in developing countries. The archive covers her career as a Texas state legislator, lawyer, professor, college president, and founder of two women's equality organizations. Papers consist of legal, political, and personal correspondence; legal, political, legislative, and committee files; newsletters, reports, and bulletins; research material; newspaper clippings; maps; video cassettes; audio tapes; and photographs. An online collection exhibit is hosted by the UT Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice.

The Free Burma Rangers (FBR) is a multi-ethnic humanitarian service movement. Ethnic pro-democracy groups send teams to be trained, supplied and sent into the Burma areas under attack to provide emergency assistance and human rights documentation. The Free Burma Rangers Collection features documentary and advocacy videos produced from FBR's humanitarian mission footage. Videos are in regional Burmese languages with English subtitles and translations.

The Genocide Archive of Rwanda (GAR) features video testimonies from genocide survivors, video recordings of the Gacaca Court proceedings and remembrance ceremonies, photographs, and archival documents that provide context to the history of the 1994 Genocide. Materials are in Kinyarwanda. Select videos have English subtitles and translations and French translations. Select archival materials have abstracts in English and French. GAR is a collaborative project of the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, Aegis Trust, and Rwanda’s National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide.

The diaries kept by George Cecil Ives (1867–1950), a contemporary of Oscar Wilde and a campaigner for penal reform and fairer treatment of homosexuals, span more than half a century (1890s–1940s) and offer rich accounts of what at least one gay man thought and did, day by day. The Center has 122 diary volumes, photographs, and correspondence, as well as documentation about the Order of Chaeronea, a secret society Ives founded for gay men. Additional Ives correspondence can be found in the archives of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology (BSS; 1910s–1940s). BSS, co-founded by Ives, Havelock Ellis, Edward Carpenter, and others, concerned itself with all sorts of sexual matters and from the beginning had a strong and loyal membership of homosexuals. The BSS archive contains correspondence, meeting minutes, and other documentation.

The collection of writer, educator, and civil rights advocate George I. Sánchez, contains correspondence, written works, speeches and interviews, photographs, and reference materials document Sánchez's career as an educator in New Mexico and Texas, his involvement with organizations such as the American Council of Spanish-speaking People, the University of Texas and the League of United Latin American Citizens, and his activism against the segregation of Mexican American schoolchildren in the southwestern United States.

George Lister was a career foreign service officer who held State Department posts in Moscow, Warsaw, Rome, and Bogota, and worked in the State Department's Bureau of Latin American Affairs. In the 1970s, he played a leadership role in the creation of the Bureau of Human Rights, Democracy, and Labor, and in 1974 Lister became the first Human Rights Officer in the State Department's Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. Because of his important behind-the-scenes work in making human rights an important consideration in diplomacy, he was labeled "Mr. Human Rights" by historian Arthur Schlesinger. The Lister Papers include Lister's writings, correspondence, audio-visual materials and his collected materials on a variety of his professional and personal interests.

The large French collection of Carlton Lake contains several collections of particular interest to sexuality scholars. Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) knew everybody and was a prolific writer and correspondent. The Ransom Center has only a few works of hers in manuscript, including "Composition as Explanation" (1926), but holds a more significant number of letters to and from her. One group of correspondence is between Stein and Charles Henri Ford, and another large group consists of letters from Stein to the artist Sir Francis Rose (1909–1979). There is also a cache of photographs of Stein and a small archive of her secretary and companion, Alice B. Toklas (1877–1967).

Bought & Sold: An Investigative Documentary About the International Trade in Women, filmed between 1995-1997, investigates the illegal trafficking of women out of Russia and into Asia, Europe and the United States through interviews with trafficked women, traffickers, law enforcement officials, social workers, and mafia members in Russia, eastern Europe, and Japan. In partnership with WITNESS, Steve Galster, Executive Director, and Gillian Caldwell, Co-Director of the non-governmental organization Global Survival Network, filmed and conducted the investigative journalism for the documentary. In order to gain entry to trafficking networks, Galster and Caldwell established a dummy business that claimed to import foreign women. To the extent permissible by law, Galster and Caldwell secretly filmed in the environments in which trafficked women worked. Whenever possible, Galster and Caldwell disclosed their research intentions. The film was released in 1997 and received widespread media coverage in the US and abroad, including specials on ABC Primetime Live, CNN, and BBC.

Internationally recognized cultural theorist, creative writer, and independent scholar Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa, one of the first openly lesbian Chicana writers, played a major role in redefining Chicana/o, queer, feminist and female identities, and in developing inclusionary movements for social justice. Her theories of mestizaje, the borderlands, and the new mestiza, as well as her code-switching, have had an impact far beyond the field of Chicano/a studies. Her insistence on community and coalition-building united feminist concerns with issues of race, gender, class, sexuality, health, and spirituality. Anzaldúa also played a formative role in the development of Queer Theory.